Green Summer Love With Amara

Thursday, July 20th, 2017

I recently had the absolute pleasure collaborating with Amara. Since I love all things green I found some amazing items in their shop which you can find below. I can’t tell you what’s my favourite but I’m definitely using the glasses the most. I love their touch of (different) green at the bottom. The plates are just perfect when I invite my friends over to have some food on our lovely terrace in the middle of the city. I also never go out without my green drink bottle anymore. I just love that it looks so elegant. You can find all the products below.

Found Time And Created Some New Digital Designs

Tuesday, September 6th, 2016

The other night – yes, night… I seem to work much better at night – I created some new digital designs. I actually watched a video series on Skillshare (looooove it) about choosing vintage imagery which has been collected and archived on the world wide web to create collages. It was such an inspiration. So I just looked for cool vintage images on the Internet and here are the results. My favourites were the octopus, the butterfly, the fish, the flowers, and the bees. They’re all quite nature related, aren’t they? And since I’m also obsessed with geometrics (see my triangle obsession) I thought I combine both. I love to create contrasts like nature and geometrics.

I’ve already published these designs on my Instagram account but I was thinking I should make these designs also available on Casetify and Society6. What do you think? I used to update my profiles all the time and now there is so much on my plate. I don’t want to complain because I love all the projects I’m working on.

You probably already know but I’m a social media consultant and therefore, I’m always on the lookout for collaborations. Let me know if you’re a freelancer in whatever category, e.g. graphic design, copywriting, photography, etc. Connect with me on my blog or on Twitter here. Besides my new digital designs I also just launched my client’s new website which I created on WordPress. There was a little proud moment when it went live. Check it out here if you want.

Don’t forget to send me your feedback! What do you think of my designs?

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Found Illustrator Marylou Faure

Thursday, July 21st, 2016

Summer is finally in London! It’s the perfect time to introduce you to illustrator Marylou Faure. I discovered her at the recent Adobe Creative Meetup. It was an event where creatives talked about their skills and careers. I highly recommend attending one of their events. If you’re interested in creative talks from Adobe you can pre-register here. It was a very well organised and inspiring session. Do you know the feeling when you met lots of creative people and listened to their stories and then you go home and just want to create things?! I definitely felt like that when I listened to Marylou’s talk.

I just thought that illustrator Marylou Faure totally stood out. Her style seemed very significant. She was telling us how she started and what it means to develop your own style. You have to practice, practice, practice, but with a lot of patience and stamina, you can do it, too.

Her illustrations are very bold. I remember she was saying she wanted to go away from the cute designs and be more daring. A great tip from her: if you want to be known for a specific style you need to put it in your profile. Don’t put everything you’ve done in your portfolio. Show people who you really are and what you want to do.

Would you agree with her statement? It was really interesting to hear that illustrator Marylou Faure started off with a darker approach to her illustrations. But one day she decided to make her drawings brighter and happier. Well, I can tell you that they definitely make me happy, especially since summer has finally arrived in London, too. She went through stages until she developed the style you can now see in her illustrations. I really loved seeing her process and progress.

It was really interesting to hear that illustrator Marylou Faure started off with a darker approach to her illustrations. But one day she decided to make her drawings brighter and happier. Well, I can tell you that they definitely make me happy, especially since summer has finally arrived in London, too. She went through stages until she developed the style you can now see in her illustrations. I really loved seeing her process and progress.

What do you think of her illustrations?

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Found Great Designers At Clerkenwell Design Week 2016

Sunday, May 29th, 2016

This year I finally made it to the Clerkenwell Design Week 2016 again. I wanted to go every year but because I worked in a full-time job which wasn’t design related I struggled to convince my employer to let me visit the festival. Well, this year I’m my own boss and I decided to spend a day at Clerkenwell Design Week 2016.

I started with a press breakfast on Tuesday where we were shown around the streets to get an overview of all the shows in Clerkenwell. There was so much to see! Then I met up with a group of design bloggers who were invited by We Blog Design to visit some selected designers and talk about their new collections.

I thought I mention here the other design bloggers if you fancy following them.

So where have I been & what have I discovered? We started our tour at Arper, an Italian design company with a Scandinavian touch, creating furniture for offices and homes. It was great to hear a little bit about the story behind the company. It only exists for a bit longer than a decade but is doing really well. Then we went to Clerkenwell’s St James Church (I had no idea it’s so much more than a church) and this was the highlight of the tour, in my opinion. Tom Dixon’s work is just stunning. He has chosen an amazing venue to showcase his work (see last picture below; he created the chandelier which stays there forever as far as I know). Have a look at Twitter to see the great installation HakFollyby Hakwood & FleaFolly Architects. The tour was followed by a visit at Vitra Showroom, the Sensorium Installation and the Sto Werkstatt. Last stop: The House of Detention. I met the designer of Off The Rails Design and I can’t wait to introduce her properly on my blog soon.

Phew! So many designers and places to discover. It was great! Thanks to We Blog Designfor organising a little tour for us!

Have you been to Clerkenwell Design Week this year?

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Found Coco’s Liberty – A New Jewellery Brand

Wednesday, April 27th, 2016

Since I’m a freelancer I go to even more networking events. So it happened that I met the lovely Elina from Coco’s Liberty one day and heard all about her jewellery startup. I wanted to know how she started, where she gets her inspiration from and what it looks like to have to manage your own brand. Please let me introduce you to Coco’s Liberty – fierce minimal Scandi chic jewellery paired with a London edge.

Why did you start Coco’s Liberty?

I have always been into jewellery – I find jewellery super exciting because the right accessories can totally make an outfit from simple to stunning.

When I quit my lawyer job from one day to the other because it hit me that I don’t want this to be the rest of my Life – I applied to study jewellery design at Central Saint Martins, and while currently on a break from my studies, I started with Coco’s Liberty because more and more people asked me where I got my jewellery from, so I figured I could turn my passion for jewellery into also selling my jewellery.

What inspires you when creating a new collection?

I get a lot of inspiration from every day surroundings like industrial things like screws or even toothpicks. I find every day things can look very interesting and usually I transform something I see immediately and imagine how it could look as jewellery in my head. After I have an initial idea – I try to come up with matching items, a whole collection – usually that works best when I sit at my workbench and just start creating the pieces.

Being an entrepreneur, what do you like the most about it?

I really like the freedom to do whatever I want with the business and the flexibility around it. I don’t have to justify ideas and plans to any bosses. I also like the freedom around it: I’m a total night owl – so I love working at night-time when every body is asleep. Running your own business comes with tons of challenges I’ve never thought about before – but when you find the solution, you can be super proud of yourself.

What is your top advice when starting a business?

Be passionate about your own business and never give up! There will be hard times, esp. in the beginning but if you are passionate about your own business eventually the people will follow.

Can you describe a day at Coco’s Liberty?

Not one day is the same to be honest. From Mondays to Wednesdays I alway have a lot of office work, which can be anything from invoicing to dealing with press/magazines and our stockists and everything around that. But it might be that I’m a lot of the time in Hatton Garden for example to source gemstones and materials. Currently I’m also planning the next Look Book shoot; thinking about which photographer, which model, when it should be done etc…

I also try to deal with customers and their orders directly because I love to see what they order and like to hear their feedback. Most of the times I don’t end up making the items any more, but we do have a lovely Coco’s Liberty goldsmiths team who are making the jewellery pieces.

I usually only sit down at the workbench these days to make bespoke customer pieces like engagement rings which mostly is on Fridays or when I design the new collection. I usually end up being at my studio a lot during the weekends because I have a bit of quite time then to sit at the workbench and create new ideas.

Last week I was in Germany to launch my new upcoming collection to the German market, so this week was completely different again. But that’s the beauty of being independent and running your own business – not one day is the same.

If you want to meet Elina and get a feel for her jewellery she’ll be at The London Artisan on Sunday, 15th May. I’ll probably pop by as well.

I love Elina’s little studio where she makes her jewellery. Find below a few behind-the-scenes pictures of the Coco’s Liberty studio!

What do you think about Coco’s Liberty?

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Found Creativity With Waffle Design [Behind-The-Scenes]

Monday, April 11th, 2016

Header image by Yeshen Venema Photography

I have decided that I will feature designers as well as artists on my blog. You’re probably already familiar with my artist section and I’m excited to add big and small designers to my blog now as well.

Last week, I had the opportunity to join a blogger event organised by In The Window™, a global social platform for design stories and collections. They invited us to explore behind-the-scenes of the Waffle Design Studios. We met designer and founder Ciara in her Sugarhouse Studio in Stratford and got a glimpse of what it’s like to come up with new ideas and make the products yourself.

Ciara Waffle uses the finest fabrics to make (bespoke) cushions, rugs and throws. Her creativity comes out with her unique embroidery designs. We were lucky enough to get a little glimpse on how she does it and were even showed how to do it ourselves. Scroll down to the bottom of this post and you’ll see the result of the little bag I embroidered. I have never done it before and I can tell you it’s so much fun. We were all saying that it’s quite therapeutic sitting down and concentrating on our embroideries. I snapchatted all the different designs of the bloggers but I forgot to take a proper picture of them. You can had over to the #LiveTheStoryto see all the tweets of the participants though.

Can I tell you how much fun it is to create something?! Look out for workshops or ask your favourite designer if you can have a behind-the-scenes experience. I thought it was fantastic that Ciara Waffle opened the doors to her studio for us and that she was happy to invite us to the world of embroidery. I love that In the Window made it their mission to get designers’ stories out to everyone. It makes such a difference knowing who the genius behind a product is. I’m definitely a fan of Waffle Design now.

ME

Welcome to my blog! I'm glad you're here because this is the right place to get inspired. Together we can live a more creative life and discover the curious world of art and design.
I'm Uli & if you want to collaborate with me, send me an email at uli@foundsomepaper.com.